Ring of Promise: A LitRPG novel (Elements of Wrath Online Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  11,000 Experience Points awarded!

  42 Gold Pieces awarded!

  Grade A Entrenching Call Skill Gem awarded!

  Congratulations! You have gained a level and are now a level 40 Warlord!

  Strength increases by 1 to 167!

  Agility increases by 1 to 62!

  Power increases by 1 to 30!

  Infusion increases by 2 to 234!

  Vitality increases by 2 to 313!

  Health Points increases by 20 to 3230!

  Elemental Power increases by 20 to 2440!

  While it wasn't quite the mind-blowing, numbing bliss of pharmacy-grade pain, the double burst of a quest reward and a level up (especially an even-numbered one with its gains to even your worst Growth stats) left me sitting there in interaction mode, smiling like an idiot for a few moments.

  When I finally got my focus back onto Sir Copperholt, he had moved back to his rest spot behind the desk and his starting dialogue hung there by his head with the usual queries there. I must have missed his dialogue associated with the quest turn in because of the temporary euphoria, but there was one thing I didn't miss.

  There was a new dialogue suggestion there.

  With Scorchtusk gone, is there any fresh news from the North?

  Now while I had taken my time leveling, milking each level bracket for every job opportunity I could, I had studied the wikis, the walkthroughs, the course of the game. This wasn't in any of those. This was brand new content … and then I remembered the strange glint I had seen as I loaded in. North of Granholm.

  "Sir Copperholt, with Scorchtusk gone and the forest safe, has any news come from the North?" I asked, feeling my palms itch in anticipation. I likely wasn't the first person to run into this, but I couldn't help but feel the thrill of discovery.

  The knight steepled his fingers on the desk, leaning forward with a serious scowl on his stone-grey jowls. "There is news both joyful and disturbing now that the tradelines with the Water Kingdom are safer. We received word that a dignitary from the Ocean Mother's court has started on its way, eager to begin planning on finally quenching the Flame of Conflict that divides our two lands."

  Copperholt was likely on a script but I felt compelled to play along. "That has to be the joyful news, so what's so disturbing, good sir?" I replied.

  "The dignitary was supposed to arrive this turning past, yet there has been no news along the roads or from our scouts." He sighed, his steamy breath not fluttering his stone mustache a millimeter. "We fear the worst but have no idea where the Nix ambassador may have come to harm. Not along the roadways, that much is assured!"

  I planted the butt of my banner firmly onto the stone floor and let the colors of Granholm fly. Yeah, sometimes I really got into the play of the moment. "I saw a strange disturbance in the Northlands. It may have been related to the disappearance. Let me go forth to investigate!"

  The knight perked up some and nodded vigorously. "Of course! Do so with the utmost haste! The safety of the Ocean Mother's own is vital to bringing peace to our world." He stood once again and pointed at my chest. "I commission you, Warlord, to bring back the ambassador safely. As no doubt the corrupting influence of the Flames is involved, do not hesitate to gather allies on your way. The resistance ahead will be most fierce!"

  Quest 'A Diplomatic Incident' available!

  Objective: Find and escort the Ocean Mother's ambassador to Granholm!

  Reward: 30% Experience, Choice of Grade S Blade of Diplomacy or Grade S Banner of Two Nations

  Do you accept?

  30% Experience? That was new. Every other experience reward had been in flat sums; the explanation must have been in the patch notes. It didn't matter. This was new content, which meant it was likely part of the lead-in to Crystalfire. "I accept! Thank you for the honor, Sir Copperholt."

  "May the Elements guide you to the ambassador, Shale!" Sir Copperholt ended his speech with a salute before returning to his idle state.

  Turning from him, I marched straight back for the plaza, ignoring a few shouted congratulations from the others gathered around the knight's desk. No time to bask in some possibly deserved praise. I had caught the scent of a quest, so I was all business now.

  The first thing to do was to get the help that Copperholt hinted at. Warlords were defensive powerhouses and not bad at Support either, Affinities Craggars shared at a racial level, but we sucked at damage. Even if I thought I was the most elite badass on Elementalis (which I knew would be a lie), I wouldn't even think of diving into this solo. You learned early on not to take NPC warnings about difficulty lightly in EO.

  I found one of the rare unoccupied benches under an oak tree in the plaza and settled my armored bulk down. There was no harm, I figured, starting with the messages already sitting in the Herald. Maybe they had nothing to do with the big patch but the likelihood of that was about zilch. With a mental nudge, Burndall's message expanded into a piece of yellowed, slightly singed paper that materialized into my hands.

  Hey, man! Are you looking for more work? I really want to get in on this whole Crystalfire thing but after seeing how Scorchie went, I don't want to try this alone. I also have no idea where to start. The wikis aren't updated yet. I'll pay good!!! Contact me, bro!

  I mulled it over. The kid was quite the noob but at least he was enthusiastic plus his Gems showed he could think outside the box. That was always a useful strategy in EO. It didn’t hurt he would be paying me. Maybe I could even show him a thing or two as we worked through the questline. I laid Burndall's letter on my lap and glanced over at Kayla's.

  Her letter was on neat, clean parchment with a gold leaf border. At the top was the crest of the Sisters of Artemis, circular and segmented into quarters, each a different color to represent the four Elements and stylized archers launching arrows outward.

  Hello, Shale, I hope you're doing well! As on the ball as you seemed to me, I know you've seen the new patch notes and know there are some big things coming. Warlords might get the respect they deserve, finally!

  Speaking of Warlords, I need a good tank to help me out with something special. I think I've found the start of the Crystalfire line and I want to check it out before bringing it up to the guild's leadership council, but this really feels like group content. As our usual tank hasn't logged back in yet, I was wondering if you wanted to join up with me to tackle this.

  Herald me if you're interested!

  I glanced from letter to letter. I was a bit dubious as to why someone in a top raiding guild would even need my help (while good tanks were hard to find, a raiding guild would already have good tanks to call up) but Kayla had seemed both nice and respectful when we had taken on Scorchie. Besides, I might not be able to join the Sisters with their all-female membership policy but forming a friendship with their members might help me find another strong guild that might be needing an extra tank for Crystalfire.

  To heck with it! I couldn't keep hiding in my shell if I wanted to win any of those prizes. Chrissy needed this so I was going to do it. I stood up, blinking both letters back into the Herald interface, and brought up the Messenger tab as I made my way to Granholm's north gate.

  Beyond the four great Elements and their Kingdoms, there are two binding forces, commonly known as Elements of Power that lie at the core of Elementalis. These Elements are Light and Darkness, life and death, both essential to the existence of our planet but continually at war with one another. Light and Dark were once balanced in the time before the Sundering but someone, unknown to history, unleashed the Elements of Conflict and broke our world.

  From the History of Elementalis, EO Internal Wiki

  I don’t think there will be a big backlash against the changes in Patch 2.0. There are a lot of little tweaks, sure. A real effort to keep the balance of damage, defense, and support, but it’s mostly that, little tweaks. The thing that I think will even out the meta the most is having content that will remain a challenge from the start of the leveling experience to the height of end-
game. I’m just hoping our players feel the same way.

  Kyle Patruski, when questioned about player backlash to Patch 2.0

  5

  I interposed my shield between my face and the granite club of a Crystal Ogre as a pack of Pyrlins, goblin-like things composed of fool’s gold, clawed at Burndall. Snow whipped past the melee in the deep valley, surrounded by the immense, rocky peaks of the Dominion Mountains.

  Throwing back the attack with a grunt, I followed up with a Shield Slam, driving the pot-bellied giant back despite his stony bulk. Kayla was right there to seamlessly take advantage of the opening I made. She waved her orb, the waters glowing red for a moment, and conjured a column of flame underneath the stunned MOB’s feet.

  That moment, and pretty much every moment since things had gone south, made me glad I had brought the others along instead of going all gung-ho, solo player, charge! There had been some real temptation to do this alone after I realized I would have to wait out a good half-hour of my limited time to wait for them. That was the impatient side of me talking, the dumb side, and seeing what we were up against here, I was glad my smarter side won out.

  We’d almost thought that what I and Kayla had seen on the load-in was a trick of the eyes. Another thirty minutes passed as we navigated the trails that wound through the Dominions, connecting scattered villages/quest hubs and nestled valleys far from the main trade roads that ran north from Granholm.

  The kid was impatient at best, occasionally grumbling as digital snow began to fall. After all, he had agreed to pay both Kayla and I upfront for our assistance with no guarantee of success. “You guys are pros! I know this will turn out fine!” he had enthused as we had left the city gates.

  Trying not to marvel at the snow too much (you just didn’t see snow much in California), I was about to give into Burndall’s protests that we were on the wrong track when a shriek of panic echoed through the tall mountains.

  Quest ‘A Diplomatic Incident’ updated!

  Updated objective: Rescue the Ocean Mother’s ambassador!

  “I knew we were on the right track,” Kayla grinned at Burndall. “See, your faith in we professionals was not misplaced, kid.” That was all the prodding that any of us needed so we picked up the pace.

  Running is an interesting thing in EO. I don’t mean that simply because I can’t run in real life, no. I do remember what running is like. Here was different. It was the effortlessness of it, a kind of feeling of weightlessness that real running didn’t have. ‘Super anime ninja run’ was what somebody described it as to me, and I guess that’s as good as any way to sum it up. However you wanted to put it, our little band ate up the ground on the snowy trail, taking a twist to spill out into one of the larger valleys.

  Immediately, the question of how a small group of Nix could wind up so far from the trade road sprung into my head, even though I knew the answer (the dev team put them there, of course!). There were four of them still alive, another three (guards judging by their heavy armor) dead and torn apart across the snow.

  Sunlight danced off the gem-flecked rises of the Dominion Mountains, casting rainbows of color down into the valley, rainbows that gained a scarlet cast from the blood that was already spilled in the little valley we approached. It was a bit gruesome compared to most of the content I’d seen before, but it was effective, sending a spike of adrenaline through me. Those that lived were running, their carriage an overturned wreck at the far end of the valley, pursued by what looked like a typical swarm of MOBs common here in the mountains.

  The previously mentioned Crystal Ogre, the little cousin of the Mountain Giants, was leading the pack, a glistening, faceted pear-shaped body on stumpy legs with a club gripped in his gorilla-like arms. A half-dozen Pyrlins made up the rest of the threatening beasts, and I honestly was at a loss as to how an important diplomatic crew could be so hard-pressed by what was relatively low-level trash. The only answer I could come up with outside of developer whim was Copperholt’s warning about the Flames of Conflict.

  The friendly NPCs were outlined in green light with helpful status bars above their heads for a brief second before that info was added to the arcs of my main HUD. Likewise, the goon squad was outlined in red. All this was usual fare, sure, but the lack of either level notation or Grades was new.

  Almost everything in EO has a Grade. Back in ancient MMO history, they used a color system for stuff like monster difficulty and item quality but even NSAF technology can’t correct completely for color-blindness. Now, most deep-dive games work on a lettered or numbered system.

  For EO, it was Grades from D (for the worst or the weakest) through to A, with a jump to Grade S for the best of the best or the toughest of the toughest. As if I needed any more confirmation that this was part of the Crystalfire quest line, the un-Graded nature of our opposition sealed the deal.

  As Kayla’s flames scorched the Ogre’s polished facets and melted some of the harder edges into slag, I knew we were in trouble since Fire had bonus damage against Earth creatures. It should have done more. Way more!

  Kayla’s Flame Column hits Crystal Ogre! It takes 6% Fire Damage!

  Percent damage? Must be how the system reported the scaling damage and effects on MOBs but there was no report of added damage from the Elemental clash. There was something else wrong here but I had bigger problems to worry about. Burndall was fumbling with motion controls and the Pyrlins had already knocked off a tenth of his Health.

  With the Ogre still stunned for a moment from my shield, I focused on my job: get the aggro and don’t die in the process. I gestured out with my hand towards the kid and shouted out, “How about trying to eat me instead?”

  My gesture activated the Grade A Threat Transfer Gem in my gauntlets while I mentally queued up that shiny new Entrenching Call Gem I had earned an hour before. There was a brief flash emanating from Burndall which then focused into a wispy line that traveled back into my hand, a light that drew the beady black eyes of the false-gold beasties.

  You activate Threat Transfer! Burndall loses 400 points of threat from all enemies! You gain 400 threat with all enemies!

  Only a little slower than myself, Kayla backpedaled away from the Ogre and deftly swapped from damage-dealing to support, throwing out another Thorned Ice Shield at me. As familiar ice frosted over my shield, icicles sprouted from its surface. The mass of Pyrlins were on me before my Call activated, though, clawing and tearing at my armor, my shield, my arms, and my legs.

  They didn’t hurt much, and thankfully, my armor and the Ice Shield absorbed most of the incoming damage, but those scratches could add up quickly once the Ogre got his act together. At least the little nasties were getting stuck with ice spikes in their hands, and with any luck, maybe they would break their teeth on my plate armor.

  While the remaining ambassadors had poured past us and hid in a nook of crystal and stone, they hadn’t moved beyond the range of my Entrenching Call. I threw my banner up defiantly and bellowed out the order, “Stand fast! We will not fall!” Warlords were as good with Support Skills as they were with Defensive ones and this Call had aspects of both; getting my hands on this kind of Gem had been one of the many reasons I’d wanted to go after Scorchtusk.

  Boon ‘Entrenchment!’ gained! All allies in range gain +12% Block, Dodge, and Physical resistance!

  Burndall finally managed to finish fumbling with what he was doing, and to my surprise, it was hot-swapping Gems in his loadout. Even with purely mental commands, it wasn’t a fast process (there was an internal hard cooldown on such actions to prevent all manner of exploits) and it was a fair bit slower to do it manually. Still, he had a huge grin on his face when he slapped a final Gem into his blade and slammed it down into the ground.

  “I learned this from you, dude,” he crowed triumphantly at me as the ruby in the blade’s pommel burned with a fierce light.

  For a split-second, I thought he had made a noob mistake for sure as what looked like a fairly typical spell, Fire Ring, blazed up ar
ound him. It was a common Gem that caused, well, a ring of damaging fire (or another element based on Mod Gems) to burn for a time around the caster. Neat but totally pointless with all the MOBs clustered around me. Burndall was a noob, sure, but I shouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion because an eyeblink later, a Mod Gem fired up right next to the ruby.

  The kid had actually gone out and nabbed a Command Gem of his own! Warding flames burst to life around Kayla, the entire ambassadorial crew, and me, all based on Burndall’s superior Fire Affinity and casting statistics. The Pyrlins let out a collective shriek of pain as they started to melt almost immediately, having a third of their Health cut away in one swath. The Ogre must have been the big boss of this quest because these little snots were taking proper Elemental damage, even more than I was expecting.

  Did they buff Command Gems? Damn, I was being so unprofessional by not having read all the patch notes before I dove into today!

  No time to have recriminations, though, as the big quartz fatty regained his senses and bellowed out an incoherent challenge. My instinct was to try to shove through the circle of goblins, to get the ogre in on the burning lovefest, but the little things were everywhere, tangling in my legs and blocking any forward movement. They’d melt into slag in a few more seconds but not soon enough …

  “Cover up, Shale,” Kayla shouted. “Big move telegraphing!” She was backing up more, her hands weaving through the animations of a big spell, but I didn’t hesitate, look, or question her warning. I just raised my shield and planted my feet. She was a pro after all and more importantly, in just these two fights, I had the feeling I could trust her implicitly.